Mostly about dryads
by Valiant Me
Summary: One always thinks of nymphs as creatures of supernatural beauty, but our subconscious merely grants them greatly beautified human features. They are not perfectly handsome human beings. Not in the slightest.


**Dryads have been a constant feature of my imagination my entire life. I grew up reading greek mythology for kids and C.S Lewis' wonderful Chronicles of Narnia. How could I not end up writing something or other about them? The nature of their existence has always intrigued me, especially since I started reading fanfiction that strived to develop their characters. So here is my take on them as well as my first shot at writing Pevensie point-of-view. **

**Disclaimer: I am neither dead nor british. I do not own the Chronicles of Narnia.**

I remember the first time I saw a Wood nymph; a dryad. It was my first or second day at Cair Paravel when I spotted one walking hurriedly down the corridor. I must say the moment had a rather anti-climatic feel to it; for one, the creature was _walking _(for some stupid earthly reason I'd always pictured dryads gliding), for the other she looked much too occupied on whatever mundane business she had on her mind to fully evoke magical woods and songs.

I was only twelve in my defense. As idealistic and naive as a girl has a right to be, growing up in a loving home, with a mother who read fairy tales to her when she was younger. I couldn't even take a good glimpse of her face before she turned the corner and disappeared from sight. She was the subject of much discussion between Lucy and me, that night in our private chambers.

Then came the feast the following night and the dancing that followed. The room was swarming with dryads then, explicitly called as entertainment for the evening. The Narnians wanted us to see Narnia at its finest very much.

There were dozens of them, all wearing the same earthy green kirtles. That was when I was able to look into their faces properly. I can't say I didn't flinch; because I did. One always thinks of nymphs as creatures of supernatural beauty, but our subconscious merely grants them greatly beautified _human _features. They are not perfectly handsome human beings. Not in the slightest.

One of them turned to stare at me directly, before the dance started. Her skin was white, translucently so, and revealed thick green networks of veins. Her features seemed to me carved out of wood. But her eyes! The least human-like vestige upon their faces: dark grey orbs, larger than any I'd ever seen. They seemed to stare right into my soul. I remember I looked away, self-consciously. Beside me Peter seemed to be having some trouble clearing his throat.

They all sported similar silver-like hair that fell to their waists in knotted disorderly manes. It reminded me of the threads of silk-worms. Showers of leaves from their trees cascaded indiscriminately down their heads. The eldest there, an ancient elm, smiled directly at her new monarchs: a group of fidgety British children who'd been slammed quite suddenly into a world that was entirely unlike their own. She smiled a smile of long thin teeth that looked like they would shatter at any given moment and spoke.

A voice that could never be taken for a human's. A tree's voice, the most beautiful voices the Narnian world had to offer, to quote my sister loosely. I can't remember her words now, but I don't think they were very important. The feeling they left behind in each of my sibling's and I on the other hand, couldn't be erased even by the year we spent in solid England before going back. The closest I can get to it is the feeling that came over me the first time I heard Aslan's name, before knowing who he was. I'd felt like all of my senses had gotten hold of delicious and delightful things.

Then she'd started singing while her fellows circled around her. They moved slowly, rhythmically, while they chanted back at her. A myriad of the most scrumptious sounds you could ever hope to hear.

My brothers and I have tried again and again to remember what languages had been spoken in Narnia and all its adjacent countries. It could not have been English, and yet we have no memory of another. Lucy was never interested in such matters. But I can write quite clearly now, that the dryads sung in a tongue that was most definitely their own. I am most certain of it.

I cultivated friendships with a couple of dryads, in the years subsequent. Or rather, I grew to like them very much and knew they liked me back. Dryads are not humans.

They are no amphibian-like combination of spirit and body. They are rather the _embodiment_ of a spirit. It took years for me to finally wrap my head around the concept. They have absolutely no ties to their humanoid encasement. They _are _their trees.

I know kings before our time married dryads and even produced offspring with them. But from what I know of dryads I cannot imagine their forming true attachments that could possibly compete with the one bond that is their lives.

Edmund developed a soft spot for Lucy's handmaid when he was seventeen. The dryad had found it endearingly amusing: she was a hundred and eight. The poor boy had endured weeks of me and Lucy teasing him endlessly while raids kept cropping up in the Lantern Waste. It hadn't been his best year.

I write this now, as an essay I know I'll never hand in. How would my robust English teacher react, I wonder, if I actually did?

**Even if you hated it I would still like to know what you think of this! **


End file.
